Australian tech news
First quarter 2023 in Australia saw technology news headlines on issues including Australia’s critical minerals industry, developments in the AUKUS grouping, Australia’s digital assets and crypto space, concerns around digital literacy and related skills in Australia, and many more.
Hit the links below to read news items for that month; or browse the page to gain an overview of Australia’s tech news headlines in Q1 2023.
January 2023 | February 2023 | March 2023
We also deliver a weekly email newsletter, capturing the week’s tech news headlines from across Asia Pac and the Indo-Pacific.
Australian Strategic Policy Institute: Critical Technology Tracker
Australia’s tech news: March 2023
- Australian Defense Force Space Command sees need to quickly secure ‘non-destructive’ capabilities to deter attacks on satellites, or interfere with enemy satellites
- Australia: LaunchVic unveils new grant program, offering up to $300K for organisations to run pre-accelerator programs to help women founders build a minimum viable product and find their first customers
- Shark Tank Australia applications are now open for Australian citizens and permanent residents with startup business ideas
- AUKUS defense pact advances with upcoming leaders meeting in San Diego, home of US Pacific Fleet, with discussions set around tech and info-sharing, submarines and more
ASPI: The case for an Indo-Pacific hybrid threats center
- Australia: University of Melbourne to back 2 female-founded health startups -Kali Healthcare at-home pregnancy monitoring startup, and clinical trial participant recruitment startup Torch Recruit
- Australia: Legislation under consideration to allow up to 2000 university students and recent graduates each year to defer the cost of accessing startup accelerator programs using HECS-style loans
- Australia’s Investible venture capital firm partners with UAE’s Hub71 to support tech startups and early-stage companies in Abu Dhabi
- Australia: An intro to the 12 agri-tech startups selected for Rocket Seeder’s latest AgTech Seeds cohort
“ASX-listed companies have revealed tens of millions of dollars in exposure to the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, as Australian tech leaders face an anxious wait…”
- ICYMI: Australia-India Critical Mineral Investment Partnership has been extended with new lithium and cobalt projects providing key milestones towards sustainable supply chains
- Australia: Female Founder Pitch Night applications extended, with pitch training set for Thursday 23rd March
- Australia: Brisbane’s Hypersonix Launch Systems aerospace firm selected by US Defense Innovation Unit to provide hypersonic vehicles for testing, beating international companies for the contract
- Australia: City of Sydney opens applications for ‘Ready Set Grow’, a 12-week business innovation accelerator, delivered by Disruptors Co and based in the city’s Tech Central innovation precinct
Australia: Government flags option to shift cyber risk and liability from community to “…software and cyber security service providers, telecommunications firms and technology developers”
- Australia: Latitude Financial consumer finance provider confirms cyberattack, with details of 14M customers stolen from its computer systems amounting to what may be Australia’s biggest data breach
- “$368 billion, 20,000 jobs over 20 years: How AUKUS could ‘fundamentally transform’ Australia”
- Australia: Cauldron secures $10.5M seed funding with animal-free meat and dairy products, with sights on creating Asia-Pac’s largest network of precision fermentation facilities
- Australia: Herik Labs takes Entrepreneur of the Year and People’s Choice awards at Ventures ilab Accelerator Pitch Night with highly-efficient 3D-printed rocket engine
- Twitter lost 46% of its Australian advertising dollars following Elon Musk takeover, dropping from $7.3M to $3.9M in just the final 3 months of 2021
The Decoding China dictionary: Terms, meanings, framing
Australia’s tech news: February 2023
- Australia: “Customers like chatbots as they provide 24/7 support (76%), faster response times (58%) and autonomy (44%)…respondents are 24% more likely to interact with brands using a chatbot than…with an agent…”
- Australia: Q-CTRL raises $27.4M with Salesforce Ventures as a new investor, developing software that helps quantum computers run more accurately
- “According to the survey, 62% of Australian CFOs believe their IT security and resilience measures are effective…”
- Australia: H2i Technology working on systems to inject hydrogen into diesel engines to reduce overall diesel use, building 10 commercial-ready systems with plans for field testing
- Australia: “If the crypto ecosystem matures and develops, it could open significant new opportunities for businesses and consumers alike, creating jobs and fostering innovation…”
“The crypto ecosystem also has the potential to help improve competition in the technology and other sectors, which would carry broader benefits for the Australian economy. Australian businesses can take advantage of the technological advancements to improve their operations, create new opportunities for growth, build efficiencies into existing products, and explore new markets.”
- Australia: A brief intro to 5 agri-tech startups worth keeping an eye on, working on autonomous equipment, methane reduction and more
- Australia: Digital 2023 report finds Australia has the highest monthly TikTok usage time in the world with users spending an average of 29 hours, 36 minutes per month on the platform
- Australia: Defense Department to remove surveillance cameras made by China’s Hikvision and Dahua from gov’t buildings, firms already sanctioned
- Australia’s Openpay buy-now-pay-later firm enters receivership, just a week after recording quarterly revenue of over Au$10M
- Australia: Fable Food Co alt-meat startup raised $8.5MM Series A funding led by Singapore’s K3 Ventures VC, focusing on shiitake mushrooms instead of soybeans or peas
- Australia: Griffith University inks 3 -year partnership with LuminaX Healthtech Accelerator for 14-week programme to fast-track commercialisation and market-readiness for 10 Australian startups each year
Digital Assets in Australia – Tech Council / Accenture
- Australia: CryptoSpend fintech builds on launch last year of country’s first Australian-native crypto-Visa card with sights on $5M Series A fundraise, with app allowing users to pay bills, send crypto or cash out to Au$
- Australia: Tracksuit raises $6.8M, focusing on quantifying the value of a brand
- Australia: Comm’s and Media Authority to explore implementation of SMS sender ID register to block cyber-scammers from sending false-ID texts, a system used in the UK, Spain, Ireland and Singapore
- Australia: Gov’t privacy reform proposal would give citizens greater control of personal information, and to opt out of targeted ads, erase their data and sue for serious breaches of privacy
- Australia: Securities & Investments Commission supports formal regulation of ‘buy now, pay later’ financial products as a form of credit, seeing growing issues in consumer ability to repay, and provider fees
Tending Australia’s tech ecosystem: Who should be regulator(s)?
- Australian tech major Atlassian apparently hacked, seeing staff and office details posted online as a result of compromised third-party service
- Australia: Loam gains Au$105M Series B funding with soil carbon capture technology utilizing fungi
- Australia: SwarmFarm Robotics raised $8.3M Series A with driverless tech, specialty robotics solutions and an open platform to develop on
- Australia: China’s Alipay+ preps for activation in 8000 retailers using Australia’s epay, boosting cross-border mobile payments with global wallets
- An intro to a range of cybersecurity-focused startups to watch in 2023 including Australia’s SharePass, providing end-to-end encryption in confidential data transfers
- Australia: Vic gov’t now conducting audit of all security cameras at gov’t-owned sites to identify China state-owned companies, with likely replacement required due to espionage concerns
Pacific Islands Forum: Pacific Security Outlook Report 2022-2023
- Australia: Monash University adds Transact’s NFC-enabled ID system for students, faculty and staff, with ID storage via Apple Wallet or Google Wallet
- Australia: An intro to SharePass, providing confidentiality in communication with end-to-end encryption
- Australia: ULUU, combating climate change by sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere using seaweed-based material and microbial fermentation to create bioplastics
- Australia: Volvo and GEODIS launch pilot program aiming for first fully electric truck in the Australian market, focusing on metro areas and a 200km range
- Australia: $1M AgTech Grants Program launched by Agriculture Victoria and LaunchVic, providing grants of $50K to 20 emerging agri-tech startups selected
- Immersve web3 startup partners Mastercard with sights on allowing New Zealand and Australia-based customers to make purchases directly from Ethereum crypto wallets
- Australia: Gov’t to appoint a Coordinator for Cyber Security, and new agency, with boosted authority to protect the nation from cyber-attacks
Current cybersecurity rules in Australia are “a patchwork of policies, laws and frameworks that are not keeping with the challenges presented by the digital age,” said Clare O’Neil, minister for home affairs and cybersecurity.
- Australia: 2023-2030 Australian Cyber Security Strategy Discussion Paper is available now, and open for submissions from the Australian public
- Australia: Adelaide’s Southstart, Startmate and Rampersand partner to give early-stage founders a chance to talk with VCs and pitch, as part of upcoming Odyssey festival
- Enterprise Singapore and Australia’s Haymarket HQ partner for 6-month Singapore-Australia Accelerator to help Singapore startups expand into Australia
Pacific Islands Forum: Pacific Security Outlook 2022-2023
Australia’s tech news: January 2023
- ICYMI: Australia and the United States enter the CLOUD Act Agreement to facilitate access to electronic data in investigations of serious cross-border crime
- Download: Digital Assets in Australia, 2022 Final Report, from Accenture (pdf)
- “Australia’s a bike-sharing graveyard but new players are betting big on Sydney.”
“More than 100,000 suspected login details for Australian gov’t agency portals have been discovered on a dark web forum with fears they’re part of a new massive global data breach.”
- Australia: Techstars to join Sydney’s Tech Central district, bringing mentorship, programmes, capital and global connections to Australia’s startup space
- AI, ChatGPT and education: “Australian universities to return to ‘pen and paper’ exams after students caught using AI to write essays…”
- “…in Australia, 87% of current jobs require digital literacy skills, and by 2025, the country will need another 156,000 digital technology workers according to recent research by Deloitte.”
Mobike Australia: “More than 1600 bikes with a total value of around $1.3M built by Chinese startup Mobike have been left in warehouses and on the streets of Australia’s east coast.”
- Australia: Queensland ‘battery industry has the potential to contribute $1.3 billion in annual gross value-add and produce 9,100 jobs by 2030’ suggests discussion paper
- Musk’s Twitter destruction continues: “…Twitter is in the process of ending its physical presence in Australia, cutting the handful of staff that survived its previous rounds of layoffs.”
- Australia: Recharge Industries plans Au$300M factory to build lithium-ion batteries, aiming for production in late 2024, in bid to provide a supply free of China supply chain risks
- Hub Australia unveils 62 purpose-driven companies for Flexi-Impact Program
Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in the Asia Pacific Region
- Australia & New Zealand: Techstars x Founder Institute Startup Weekend Online is set for February 17-19 – 54 hours from idea to startup
- Australia: New South Wales firms and research organisations now eligible for up to $4M to commercialise quantum computing hardware and software
- Australia: Accenture to detail engineering phase of battery gigafactory in Victoria, initially producing 2GWh by 2024 and with sights on 30GWh for energy storage systems and electric mobility
- Australia: Dept of Home Affairs awards Au$37M contract to Fujitsu to manage tech behind current Identity Matching Services system, with addition of national facial recognition database under possible consideration
- Australia and the Indo-Pacific – Understanding our strategic connections to Asia’, an 8-week, fully online course from Perth USAsia Centre, is running an info session tomorrow, January 24th
Australia: “About 2,500 current staff and a number of former staff at [Queensland’s] second-largest university have had personal data stolen, which could be used in identity theft.”
- Australia’s Rumin8 backed by Bill Gates-led Breakthrough Energy Ventures, focusing on anti-methanogenic cattle feed to limit methane emissions from agriculture
- National Australia Bank eyes ‘green stablecoin’ with recent moves into blockchain, tokenized deposits and green assets and AUDN stablecoin launch
- National Australia Bank minted AUDN bank-backed stablecoin on Ethereum blockchain in December, aiming for solution roll-out mid-2023 for trading carbon credits and overseas payments
- Australia: Consumer watchdog to investigate beauty, lifestyle, parenting and fashion influencers who reportedly failed to disclose affiliations with products, misleading consumers
- Australia: Hackers breach at least 12 firms, compromising an online education provider and impersonating it to gain access to other firms’ systems
- Singapore’s Seventh Sense to establish artificial intelligence R&D hub in Melbourne, Australia, focusing on AI-based computer vision and cryptography for defense, security, fintech and retail
Digital Assets in Australia, Final Report 2022 – Tech Council / Accenture
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SharePass: Secure communications & cybersecurity
